Posts Tagged ‘addiction’

I’m presuming, like the rest of the game-playing planet, you gave Minecraft a go during the free weekend just passed, and are now hopelessly addicted to it – but if not, here’s a fan-made trailer to try to show you what you’re missing:

Seriously, give it a go. There’s a reason it’s known affectionately as “Minecrack”.

And it certainly looks like everyone else is. Critical mass has been reached. According to THE INTERNET, sales of the 10 euro game (it’ll be 20 when it’s finished, but buy it now and you have access to all future versions) have now reached $US 250,000 a day. (Two copies of that were from our house.)

Isn’t it wonderful when talent and imagination and vision succeed?

UPDATE: MineCraft vs Civ You know, it’s not just the most addictive game for me since Civilization, it shares a number of characteristics with it:

You start off with nothing but a randomly-generated world of valleys and rivers and resources, and have to cobble together defences to succeed;

You work hard building a home, a civilization, a base – and then you test it against a hostile world. I think that’s a very powerful basic game design: build then test. You get invested in your creation, and then get to see if it’s any good.

Like Civ, Minecraft has the “one more turn” element, even if it isn’t turn-based. You’re always just a little bit away from something cool. I’ll just get this coal and iron and then fashion some armour and I’ll turn it off. I’ll just build the decking on my blocky house and then I’ll turn it off. I’ll just sail to the next island for a look and I’ll turn it off. I’ll just explore around the corner in this dark mine and I’ll… DAMN CREEPERS! Now I have to go back to where I died and get my stuff, and then I can turn it off.

And, unlike Civ, I felt no pain when I paid for it. I felt good handing over my money. This is a guy who deserves our support – as opposed to, say, 2K, who’ve been actively screwing over everyone, and particularly Australians, on the new release. Ha! We’ll lock a civilization away as DLC so you have to pay extra for it! Ha! We’ll charge Australians 60% more! Ha! We’ll lock the Steam copies in Australia – even long after people can just physically buy it in the store! (I still can’t play it for another three hours, apparently – an arbitrary, stupid restriction that is all the more annoying for its lack of any kind of plausible justification.)